The Ricochet Podcast - Losing The Enlightenment

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

There’s a lot at stake in this week’s jam-packed podcast. First up we’ve got Byron York (he of the Byron York Show on this very network) to update us on the administration that sees crises everywhere – except for the one at the border. Then the hosts get to chat with Andrew Gutmann, the New York parent who made waves recently for a publicized letter excoriating the fancy Brearly School for... Source

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for justice. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. This week we speak to Byron York about D.C. and Andrew Goodman about woke education. So let's have ourselves a podcast.

I can hear you! Welcome everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 541, the flagship podcast of Ricochet.com. The flagship of the Ricochet Audio Network, which you ought to be listening to in all of its myriad manifestations. But here we are today, together, and that's good. That's great. Peter, Rob, how are you? Peter in California, Rob in New York, me in some little city called Minneapolis that nobody's ever heard about. Last week, I can't remember how we wrapped it up, but last week we said the city was sort of on edge. Your city.

Yes. Yes. Sort of. Yes. that's one way it's one that's one way of putting it sitting sitting on a high brick wall that was lined with broken glass and now it feels like it's um not or is it not no there's a there was a general exhalation of relief right away um and as a matter of fact the building across the street from me started bringing down its boards almost immediately, which was really nice. And I'm waiting for all the other buildings downtown to remove the plywood. I'm also expecting that a lot of them are going to say, well, is it really too soon to take off the masks? It's almost as if you can draw the mask and is it safe really? Doesn't it send a message if we take off all the boards that we think

everything's okay now when everything isn't okay as we've learned we can't go back to normal because the old normal was systemically bad we've learned so actually taking it down all of the plywood and the razor wire is almost an insult it says that we've learned nothing that we want to go back to normal that's what i think of the most aspects aspects of the movement of the the the progressive almost always progressive do-gooder who says things like you know i actually think we should be i'll be wearing my mask now forever i don't mind it right i actually i know a friend of mine told me this story he was on a call he's on for a non-profit he's on a committee of a nonprofit of younger people.

So these are not old people. These are young people. And he said casually, this is like last week, casually, oh, I don't wear a mask outdoors. That's stupid. I don't wear the mask outside. And there was this, you know, Zoom, hard to tell on Zoom, but total silence. What do you mean? What do you mean what do you and he said i don't really need the mask you know apparently you don't need the mask outside and he was treated to for

for a lot of like very uh aggrieved pained pushback you know like we're is there anything that we can do? You know, how can we help you see how wrong you are? And at the end, it was about an uncomfortable, awkward silence. And then the next day, just like it, like it, like that Marshall McLuhan moment in Annie Hall. There were two articles in officially approved organs, one, the Atlantic and the other, I think was slate saying,

you don't need to wear the mask outdoors. Right. So, which was clear, which was, was, has been clear to everybody who's been paying any attention at all from the get go.

But now that Donald Trump has gone, I'm sorry to use the T word, but I find myself funnily enough, in my case, the reaction is sort of a delayed reaction. But I find myself seething that now that Donald Trump is gone, the mainstream organs feel that they can slowly accustom us to the truth. They can slowly, they can give it to us bit by bit by bit, like sick dogs that you're only allowed to feed a little bit at a time until you're sure they're okay again. I don't know. Young kids, to me, the most distressing aspect of this whole thing, and I think I really do mean that. of the things that distressed me it would be a long list but right at the top would be the absence of pushback from kids from young people young people are supposed to be rebelling and in my

as best i can tell they're the ones who are over and over again friends of ours now so i am in a cohort where now we're our friend our front we raised kids together. The kids are gone. They're off in college. They're starting their first jobs. And over and over and over again, we've had friends say to us, well, we couldn't care less about this ridiculous this, that, or the other aspect of COVID. But our children insist that we stay at home. It's just, it's bizarro world. The wrong people are submitting and concerned and and trained as you know i've been like uh i've been reading all this uh freudian and youngian

psychology for the past you know a couple years and so i now i see the entire world like this but there is a thing there's a problem with young people whether this they're addicted to fear and apocalypse like the end of the world that we're the all of the end of the world kind of pornography they've been consuming the climate change the seas will rise we're all going to die in a nuclear hall all those things it just kind of gets deep in them so they are unable that to, it's the most surprising thing is that we have young people living in terror of this disease that really has no real, statistically, has trivial effect on them. And yet they like are, I'm in stores and I'm, you know,

the months that, it was always young people, young-ish people I knew, and spraying their groceries was disinfectant um someone made an interesting analogy to me the other day so like you know trump said something you know trump said many many stupid things and one of the stupid things he said was like well maybe we can you know basically drink bleach we can inject bleach haha and maybe he made fun of him but this is actually what a lot of people were doing they were wiping their groceries down with bleach right right it wasn't that outlandish. You're an Episcopalian.

James is a Lutheran. I was sent when I was a kid, little kid, to a Baptist summer camp. Oh, my Lord. And there was a preacher. Chapel was – It didn't take. It didn't take. But there was chapel in the evening, and there was a preacher,

and we were told in detail about the end of the world and the great battle of Armageddon. And I sort of think now that was really, it was presented in apocalyptic terms, but genuinely apocalyptic. Here's the book of Revelation. People have had some notion that the world will end this way for a couple thousand years now, and we have no idea when it'll happen, but this is what it it looked like and i i sort of think that was a healthy inoculation against did you ever get that sort of thing either of you in 1968 in summer camp when i was uh went to white earth lutheran camp 68 69 i remember we always gathered

at the lake shore for vespers at the end of the day it was beautiful twilight loons calling and the rest of it is occasional shooting star and then at one point one of the counselors a guy named charlie brown got up and he was very solemn and everybody laughed because charlie brown was usually a funny kind of guy but he was really being serious and when we'd all quieted down he explained to us that the missiles had been launched from russia that they were coming this way that we had about 30 minutes to get right with god we would never see our parents again how how was our soul ordered at this moment? So, of course, there was stunned silence and sniffles and tears and the rest of it as everybody contemplated the end of the world. And then he came back and said, actually, no, that isn't happening at all. But if it was, where would

you be with God? The end result of this was, I think, to turn about half the campers against religion permanently for the rest of their life. I will never forget John Larson, who was in my grade school and who was known as something of a ne'er-do-well, walking back up the path saying that he wanted to stab Charlie Brown in the guts with a knife, which is probably not the good Christian reaction, but there you have it. Just like Lucy, I guess. So yeah, so I remember that. I remember we had that. All right. So just just I know we got sidetracked. So Minneapolis feels like it's it's overcome. It's it's it's moved past this crisis point. Is that fair to say?

Is there a looming sense in Minneapolis that he's going to appeal and those other cops are going on trial? Is there any sense of the secondary impending doom? Yeah, not really. I don't get that sense. I really don't. People are thinking that the other trial is not going to have the same sort of circus as the first. And that there won't be. I mean, put it this way.

Maxine Waters can come to town and say, if we don't get the right verdict, there should be confrontation. And that makes people think, oh, I'd better best I'd best vote my verdict this way. Nobody nobody forgot the summer of 2020. That was much more present in people's minds than anything that Maxine Waters or Joe Biden would have said. So, no, there isn't that. But now we have I mean, we had a funeral yesterday of Dante Wright, the young individual killed by the cops during a traffic stop, where he was compared to Prince. Yes, Al Sharpton, that noted theologian at Man of the Cloth, came to give a speech and compared him to Prince. And white doves were released. And so, the very moment, as AOC said, this isn't justice, this isn't justice at all. As long as the system exists that perpetuates these inequities that cause these things, there

will be no justice. So we can't look at this moment and say, here we are, we all can coalesce around this and build forward in a variety of ways. We, we, we have to address the system and the system has to be dismantled. I mean, that that's the narrative amongst, you know, the, the, the,

the loud progressive community. You know what I want? I want elections and I'm, I, and I'm impatient for them. I want, I want to understand what's happening on the ground. Have you seen polls?

How's the mayor of Minneapolis holding up in support? Is there a difference in outlook? This always fascinates me. Between Minneapolis, which I always understood to be sort of hip, progressive, and so forth, and St. Paul, which is a more conservative town just on the other side of the river what do people think of the how are the polit how are people responding to the political figures really um people right and left regard the city council as regard the mayor as as weak as ineffectual as out of his right and left people's right the people from the right do because they believe that he's a you know a stonking leftist idiot the people from the left don't like him because he's insufficiently leftist

and probably beholden to corporate interest in the rest of it uh there are some people who say that the dfl which is you know has some some cooler heads wants the entire city council gone and replaced by a slate that is either a more malleable or be just a little less out there because right now you just people get the feeling that the the city council just not is is is focused on things that perhaps are not germane to the health of the city that's you know that's some so the mayor's running you know we'll see what happens but there was a um i i saw the biography the promotional material for somebody who's running for city council i think in in the ninth ward, and her need to bring a radical agenda. She said she would bring a radical agenda to city council.

One of her Facebook remarks before the George Floyd trial, or the Derek Chauvin trial verdict, was that it was not a wise idea to burn down the buildings in your own neighborhood. And she mentioned a very wealthy neighborhood around the lake. She said that they have lots of bleep. I'm just saying. Wow. Wow. Basically, go beat and loot the people in this neighborhood over here instead of breaking into the dollar store. And I have no doubt that if she was the only candidate running in the DFL, she would win would win anyway it is possible to pursue social justice at the same time that you're trying to rebuild the city back i mean that's kind of the yin and the yang the push and the pull it's possible for politicians to walk and chew gum at the same time is it not you may say what do they chew gum's bad for your teeth james i'm sorry i can't i can't

hear you rob if i i see rob see here's the problem i have i have no sound at the moment so i see rob cocking his head like an inquisitive puppy and talking i presume he's trying to interrupt the spot but i was trying to that's so nice so frustrating we always try and interrupt the spot and you can't hear me so frustrating i cannot hear him interrupted so i'm sorry folks we're just gonna have to we're gonna have to push on because i was talking about chewing gum, right? We all chew gum. You can hear me. Chew gum is great. But the thing is, not all gum is created equal.

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Enjoy the over 5 million mouths already using Quip. Get chewing for less than $2 per gum pack. That's amazing. And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, you can get a free plastic dispenser with any refill plan. That's a free dispenser at getquip.com slash ricochet spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. You can also find the Quip electric toothbrush, refillable floss, and more in the oral care aisle at your favorite local Walmart. Quip, the good habits company. And we thank Quip for sponsoring, as ever, this, the Ricochet Podcast. Our friend Byron York is the chief political correspondent for the washington examiner and a fox news contributor i would add that in my judgment he is one of the

two or three best political observers and writers he's a reporter he reports he makes phone calls he does the work to find out what's happening one of the two or three best in the nation, and I can't think of the two or three others. He writes the Daily Memo newsletter. He hosts the Byron York Show. I want to repeat this. He hosts the Byron York Show, a podcast available on this, the Ricochet Audio Network. He is in the rough and tumble world of American politics. He is a gentleman's gentleman, and he comes by it honestly. He's an Alabaman. And as we speak to him, those of you who are listening can't see this, but just picture a man wearing a jacket and tie to record a podcast. Byron, welcome.

Thank you very much. Listen, I thought about this. I thought, first of all, I appear on Fox News fairly frequently, and I do it right here. It's in my home. And I always put on a coat and a tie because you don't want to look like a slob on television. You know, Brett Baer is there and he's got a nice suit and a tie and a pocket square. I mean, he does not do special report in a sweatshirt so i thought well what should i do for the for the ricochet folks the same thing here i am i believe we were impressed i mean i noticed you didn't specify that you're wearing pants and i don't need you to prove to me that you are you aren't we'll just assume for now that you know if i don't answer the question it's people can make all sorts of terrible uh assumptions here but yes i am in fact wearing are you wearing pants uh all right so your

standards are higher than ours that crisis averted um it is now uh april end of april uh we've had president joe biden for three months, 90 days. Is it almost 100 days? It's almost 100 days, right? Is it 93 today? Maybe something like that. Everything's great. He solved all the problems. So we have a crisis at the border.

You can call it anything you want, but it really looks like a crisis. He announced today that the most ambitious, to me, insane climate change initiative. Then announced at the same time on Friday, gigantic tax hikes coming. He says for the rich, but corporate tax hikes are coming, which to me means a tax hike for everybody. Is he crazy? Is he crazy like a fox war don't leave out war the russians are massing oh yeah on the border of ukraine and joe biden's talking tough to them uh the chinese are flying over violating taiwanese airspace every single day and to them, Biden doesn't seem to say a thing. But, okay, Byron, sum it up for us. Where are we? Well, first of all, so far, his approval ratings are quite good.

They really rank among as good as any, Donald Trump aside, who was low the whole time, as good as any in the past since, gosh, Reagan. So what's going on? I think, you know, it's interesting you talked about the crisis on the border. That is the one crisis that the White House will not admit is a crisis. And about a week ago, the president kind of inadvertently, maybe he just let the cat out of the bag, he called it a crisis. And so the White House press corps then says to the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, well, now the president's called it a crisis, right? And she said, no, no, she actually flip-flopped on behalf of the president and said it's not. But if you look, and I did, I went back and looked at all of these briefings, they're calling things crises all the time. Gun violence is a public

health crisis. There is, of course, a climate crisis. They had the Commerce Secretary on who talked about the semiconductor crisis. There's a maternal care crisis. I mean, they talk about crises all the time, just not the one that Joe Biden created himself. So what's happened, I think, is that one, he's given those Americans who wanted a sense of relief after Donald Trump, who it was just too much for them. Maybe they didn't even hate Trump. It was just too much for them. He has given them that sense of relief. And the other thing he's done is he's done a very skillful job of portraying himself doing this sort of heroic work against all of these big problems that he's rolled up his sleeves and is taking on um as a matter of

fact during the transition uh ron clain is now the chief of staff said they had four uh concurrent crises the covid crisis the related uh economic crisis uh the climate crisis and the racial equity crisis so he's actually done a good job of declaring crises and putting himself on the right side of him and telling everybody he's just doing his darn best for everybody right um of those crises it seems to me almost all of them have gigantic federal price tags attached. Yeah. Trillions of dollars being spent.

And today they announced they're putting off the trillion-dollar healthcare, I guess, solution, although we already had one, but whatever. They're putting that one off for later, probably what I would imagine to be closer to midterms closer to making it an issue where where is the opposite where what happened like i really i don't know how to put it like we went from a country that was like that that that essentially refused to do these big things these federal programs a trillion dollar this, trillion dollar that, and we kind of just changed our mind? Well, look, nobody's really been serious about fiscal responsibility for a very long time. I mean, George W. Bush wasn't, Obama wasn't, Trump wasn't, and now Biden isn't i mean i mean just really you can you've got the occasional tom coburn the late tom coburn the senator uh but the parties are not

but there's a difference there's a difference between uh between not caring about spending or not being exercised or not trying to rein in federal entitlements and this this is means the difference between like hey listen i you know i let myself have a couple drinks every now and then and i'm going on this this multi-day bender this is like the lost weekend period this is i think there was a sense of delayed um gratification or on the flip side of frustration among the democratic base who came out of the trump years so angry because you have to remember um they thought with the election of obama and the re-election of obama that they had kind of cracked the code and that there would be democratic presidents from now on. Because they put together a new coalition, the Obama coalition of minorities, young people, women,

plus demographic change would favor them. And they basically literally thought that was it. No more Republican presidents. And Donald Trump just absolutely blew that up. Their anger never went away. And I think that they felt that after the Trump aberration, they had to just grab for everything. So they were, we all know, they were talking about the Green New Deal. They were talking about massive, massive COVID bills, which they've already passed. They were talking about packing the Supreme Court.

They were talking about making the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and others states. And they themselves ended up being frustrated. Even though they win the White House, they barely win the House. And then the Senate's tied 50-50, and yet they still want to do all this. So what we're seeing now, I mean, all they've done so far is to pass this enormous COVID bill. The big things that they want to do, the non-infrastructure infrastructure bill, plus whatever they're going to do in the Supreme Court, all this stuff, they haven't done it yet. And they may have a very difficult time doing it but i think what you're seeing is this kind of pent up right energy and frustration coming out on the part of the left and they've got this kind of elderly kindly sort of man is there not all that kindly but i'm with you on that right but he has he's he's got a pretty good image right now in the polls.

And so Biden is presenting a moderate face. He was always the centrist in the Democratic race. Well, he's the centrist face of the party. I would say that maybe he's presenting half of a moderate face because he's always masked. So the other portion that we're not. That's true. Did you see that climate thing? Yes. Yes. So the other portion that we're not... That's true. Did you see that climate thing, the giant stone thing?

Yes, yes. He's on Zoom alone by himself on a Zoom call, and he's wearing a mask. Tons of world leaders, tons of little pictures on the screen, and there's one of them wearing a mask, and it is President Biden. Right. So the moderate face that he's showing us is the top part. The immoderate side is masked when it comes on. You mentioned the infrastructure crisis, of course, because we have bridges thundering down into rivers all across the country because we haven't spent any money on infrastructure for 50 years, as we're being told. So we're going to have infrastructure bill that everything is infrastructure. Reparations are infrastructure. Racism is it's all. But even so, there are quantifiable goals that you can have in an infrastructure bill that says we are going to repair x number of bridges x number of miles of roads even if you say that broadband is infrastructure even though that's ridiculous

because the starlink system is going to beam down to all these rural communities and the federal government doesn't need to run fiber optic to the barn that still is a quantifiable objective what worries me when you talk about the racial equity crisis, this is an open-ended excuse to spend whatever you want and to inject the government into absolutely every area of society. The new education standards that the president's team came up with are very explicit about the 1619 Project and Ibram X. Kendi's anti-racist ideology being formally embedded into the American school system. So this is something that they can do and never have to

account for what it is. It's an ongoing, ongoing rolling of this ideology into American society. So my question to you is, do you really think that Joe Biden trotting out there talking about how the country is systemically racist, him being a part of its governing class for half a decade, does he believe this? Does he know it? Does he know what he's, does he convinced at all that all of a sudden this new gospel is part of his political soul or are they just handing him a sheet of paper and he's reading it because it sounds good? Well, part of the governing class for half a century. Correct. You know, does he's reading it because it sounds good well part of the governing class for half a century um correct you know does he really believe it um there are there are a lot of of liberals who were liberals 10 years ago um and would are not entirely on board with being woke today they were always liberals joe democrat joe biden's always been a democrat he's been joe are not entirely on board with being woke today.

They were always liberals. Joe Biden's always been a Democrat. He's been Joe Democrat all of this time. And I don't think he's extremely woke. But that's where the party, a lot of the party's activists are right now. And listen, the things you were talking about, the 1619 Project, other issues that are put under the category of racial, quote, equity, that's not a financial worry to me. It's not a budgetary worry to me. It's a cultural worry. It's a cultural worry.

It's a very, very big cultural worry. And all I can say right now, and this is not the normal thing I cover a lot, is that, you know, we're in a period right now, and they come and they go, and we have a lot of agitated people on the left who just want to pass all sorts of bills. They want to pack the Supreme Court. I had some guy on my Twitter feed yesterday talking about the district. He clearly knew something about issues, talking about making D's 127 neighborhoods a state to bring equity to the senate i mean it's really in the harvard law review what's the george orwell statement some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them right um so but i just think

we're in this moment where uh a party and I mean the Democratic Party, has just kind of gone around the bend for a while, and it's going to have to work itself out. So, Byron, you're describing to us the government of the United States still just lying on the sofa with an ice pack on its head, feeling better that Trump is gone, but not really up to real politics again, then you've got the left venting, venting. Any serious analysis suggests that they didn't win by enough to get through the radical agenda that they're going for. And yet they're going for it all the same. This is theater. Well, theater, let's,

let's say let's, let's stick. It's, it's, it's politics is therapy. How long can we, how long can we afford this? How will,

will Russia and China wait for us to calm down and return to normal? By the way, so part of why we feel we can indulge ourselves in this therapeutic moment is that COVID is finally winding down and the economy is just roaring. I'm out here in Silicon Valley. There would be animal spirits at this time of year anyway. It's spring. But COVID is ending. The Fed has injected cash into the economy. It's let's do deals. I mean, it's buoyant out. The mood is actually buoyant. How long can this last? How long can we remain unserious, I suppose, is what I'm asking. Well, first of all, you know, for the people who did not suffer economically because of COVID,

you know, things are great. A lot of them saved a lot of money because they didn't travel to Europe as much or anywhere in the world as they would have done. So they're doing fine, which is why the relief bills should have been carefully targeted to the millions of people who had a terrible time of it, who did lose their jobs, who did lose work, and were not able to do all sorts of things, feared losing their homes and just all of this stuff. That's why the relief should have been to those people to give give them money, because there was this enormous circumstance beyond their control. Now, there was a great story in the first year of the Bill Clinton administration. Remember that Clinton got elected on health care reform, big platform, and he was going to pass the national health care

bill that Democrats had wanted to do for a generation or more, even by that time. And he put his wife in charge. So Patton Moynihan, who was the senator from New York, whom she would later take his place, says to Hillary Clinton, kind of pulls her aside and says, look, all the big things in the past have passed with 70 or more votes in the Senate, 70 or more votes. If it's big, you've got to have a kind of a bipartisan, a national consensus that was reflected in 70 votes. And she told him to jump in the lake, know she didn't want to hear it he's an old man what do you know and so she went ahead and she failed um but the fact is i think that's still true you know obamacare uh which was a lot less than some democrats wanted uh got through because

democrats had 60 votes in the senate for i think think it was 130 days. There was a 130-day period where they had 60 votes in the Senate, and they used it wisely from their point of view to get this bill through over a filibuster. So now Democrats have this agenda we've been discussing. I think they won't be able to do a lot of this and um so eventually some sort of equilibrium will be reached maybe republicans will win the house in 2022 and we won't even think about it this this biden agenda at all because there won't be one and the bigger thing will be what what the democratic party is going to do with an 80 plus year old president who wants to be re-elected and serve until he's 86 years old and whether they're comfortable with that as far as russia and china is concerned i don't know clearly

russia is being very aggressive now and what we've seen um and if you talk to republicans on the hill they were they would always say in the trump years i don't know why trump just kind of lays off russia entirely in his public statements but he's been very tough right in his policy right toward russia and now biden is kind of doing the opposite and so uh russians it's the opposite that's more dangerous it's more dangerous um so you know he said the right things you get a readout of his call with putin and he you know gives him a business about this or that according to our readout of it um but you know here you have the russians are

massing troops um so we'll see what happens there i i that I don't know. We'll, we'll see what Biden does. Byron. I know you got to run. I just want one more question for you. If we send everybody money, which we've done. Yes. And the economy comes roaring back and whatever debt bomb we're constructing for ourselves is a long fuse. It's not just tomorrow.

It's not just the day after tomorrow but it's 20 years from now i don't have to worry about that isn't that though isn't that a winning platform for a political party we have sent you money and yes the economy is doing well and we sent you money. I mean, if if if this works, then haven't we reverted to this old style, big Democratic majority country, big Democratic majority in the House and the Senate? And then these little little tiny cavilling Republicans off in the corner saying something like, well, that just doesn't seem right. Like we got to be it. I mean, isn't Joe Biden, who is so old, he probably remembers this from his teenage years, bringing us back to, if not the New Deal, then the war on poverty, then the Great Society. Well, Franklin Roosevelt was president when Joe Biden was born. And, of course, Donald Trump did the same thing.

As a matter of fact, I have to tell you, just as a not my opinion, but I was stunned in the election, in the campaign of 2020. Remember after, during the transition, after he's lost, he talks about raising the covid relief to two thousand dollars a person i thought why didn't you say that in august or september just buy you would be buying votes and that's one way to get votes is to buy them so uh i was stunned that he didn't didn't do that but so i guess what i'm trying to say is it's proven model essentially bipartisan now and republicans have always had this reputation for just wanting to do a little less than democrats like democrats will send you a lot of money and we'll send you a little less money um and we'll feel better about it i guess well byron we've had a lot of you and we feel great about that we'd like to have more but if anybody does want to listen to and of course

you all do the byron york show is available on the Ricochet Audio Network. You can follow him on Twitter, of course, at Byron York. And thank you for joining us today. Always a pleasure. We could go on for another hour and a half, forever and a day, but we're going to have to save those precious moments for later. Thanks for joining us today, Byron. Thank you guys. Enjoyed it. Bye. Bye. I have been dealing with temporary employees, shall we say. And you might even note that I'm having HR issues around the house when it comes to getting things done. HR. When you're running a business, HR issues can kill you.

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cancel anytime. You didn't start your business because you wanted to spend time on HR compliance. Let Bambi help get your free HR audit today by going to Bambi.com slash Ricochet now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.com slash Ricochet spelled B-A-M to the B-E-E dot com slash Ricochet. And we thank Bambi for sponsoring this. The Ricochet podcast. We are joined now by a civilian, but I think now he's a citizen activist. It's Andrew Gutman. He's the author of a letter to the parents of the Brearley School, which is a fancy private day school in Manhattan.

And he explained his disappointment about the school's movement towards a social justice agenda and the decision to enroll his daughter elsewhere. He wrote a letter to all of the parents the letter came to the attention of barry weiss it also came to the attention of the head the head of school jane freed who full disclosure is a friend of mine um and she shared it with the rest of us the um the letter by the way, Andrew. Thank you for joining us. So the letter said something that we or whatever it's called, that curriculum in the California school system, Chabrierly. How bad is it? Bad. I didn't realize until this week how bad it is. I mean, I only knew from my daughter's school, but what I've gotten in the last week is literally hundreds and hundreds

of emails and messages from people all around the country saying they're having the same issues, saying people are afraid to speak up. This is from public schools. This is private schools. This is even some religious schools. Kindergarten through medical school, I've had people write to me. This is, in my view, and in a lot of people's views, really, really bad, what is going on. And it's this indoctrination. It's this not, you know, ability to let people think for themselves. This is not a race issue, as I've tried to correct a lot of people. This is really an education issue.

So let me just quote from your letter, which is one of the most eloquent parts is a great letter um if brerley's administration was truly concerned about so-called equity it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies siblings and those families with especially deep pockets if the administration was genuinely serious about diversity it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students and their families to a single mindset most reminiscent of the chinese cultural revolution all right that was a good one i mean you're gonna get in trouble for that no matter what but i mean i mean let me just look super be super blunt i went to one of these schools they were super liberal i thought that ronald reagan was going to blow us all up in a nuclear Holocaust.

And, and he didn't. And then I said, now I'm, I'm like co-founded with my very conservative friend, Peter Robinson, a center, right podcast network.

So that turned out. Okay. Uh, long silence is fitting there, Andrew. No, I, it's not okay.

I don't think this is not just, you know, I, yes, I had political correct think. This is not just, you know, yes, I had political correctness too and multiculturalism, you know, decades ago when I was in school. That's not what this is. And it has accelerated. I'm just learning about this. This has been in the works now, apparently, for a long time, this critical race theory, an offshoot of postmodernism. I don't know much about it. But this has accelerated to orders of magnitude in the last year since George Floyd and because of, I think, also because of COVID, that they were able to do this without a lot of resistance. This is not just run-of-the-mill garden variety, political correctness, diversity, multiculturalism. I think this is much, much worse. May I take a moment to place you, and as best I can, the Brearley School.

You're not just an investment banker in New York. Former. Former investment banker. But you wrote how to be an investment banker. You are in every regard what Tom Wolfe described in Vanity of the banfires as a master of the universe a middle class look look wait i'm i'm gonna oh yeah yeah yeah for what we're not well yes wealthy for you know united states standards i am very middle class for new york city private school standards okay fine i'll grant you that because that takes us on to Brearley. What I want to say is simply that overwhelmingly for the parents at Brearley, even the 60 grand a year is not a problem. It's just not a problem.

Getting into the school, getting their kids accepted is the problem. So the question I have here is, I have two questions. Was there any possible educational benefit to the kids themselves, or was this the faculty indulging itself in some way? And why did the parents put up with it? If they're so rich, go found a new school. What are the dynamics here that enable this to happen? Okay, I'll be very honest. I don't know exactly what goes on behind the scenes i'm not on the board i don't know people really directly on the board although you know we've talking to people first question do i think does have any benefit to this no no i i don't i you know they're starting the process of you know eradicating the history and the classical literature type curriculums

the civics type curriculums which has been you decimated for a long time, but again, to an umpteenth degree now, and not having the ability for children to really think for themselves. No discussion really on these kind of issues. So no, I don't think there's a benefit to this. I think it's an enormous detriment. And especially, there's a lot of indoctrination uh on this second question how does this happen you know a lot of it is the the cancel culture is is the fear i believe what i said in my letter which is that more than half of the parents agree with at least a lot to most to all of what i wrote and not everybody agrees with all of it but a a lot of it. Very, very few people are speaking up. There's a couple of constituencies that have spoken up. We tried to speak up through

the year. I spoke to a lot of parents that agreed and tried to get them to speak up. And the answer almost always is, I should, I can't. Fear of losing your job, fear of pissing off the school, because you need the school. You need the school for college admissions, for ex-missions. Private schools like this are, you know, public schools run for the teachers unions. I think most of us know that. Private schools like this are run for the institution. Protect the institution. And that's exactly what they're doing this week. How can we protect the institution? You know, I believe I've heard that, you know, the board gave an unanimous vote to support the school's continuing anti-racism policies. I know there are board members who agree with some to

all of my views, but they are protecting the institution, and people are not speaking up. If you ask me why I wrote the letter, it wasn't to educate people. It was to give them, you know, a little bit some ammunition, but mostly some cover, begging them, please, you've got to speak up on this. What did your kids say? What did your spouse say? What the hell are you doing, Andrew, rocking this boat, which is such a beautiful boat in all kinds of ways, the introductions that enables your children to make the golden road from Brearley to an elite institution to a life of wealth and privilege. What are you doing? Thought it had to be done, to be honest. Yeah, I know I hurt the reputation of the institution

in some sense. I thought this was the proverbial, sometimes you have to amputate to save the patient. I care deeply about education. I really do. I care deeply about my daughter's education. I think what is happening to education, and I've learned more in the last week, is terrible. And the impact on our future as a country is horrific as we're training these kids and what we're training them in. So I just thought it had to be done. So where do you go now? I mean, you can't go to a public school because the public schools have this kind of that they have essentially the same ideology and considerably less.

I mean, you talk about parental input, it's considerably less parental input there than there is at Brearley or a place like that. If you're a, if you're a, if you're a parent of a school age child, what do you do?

Homeschool? That's what we're going to do, probably, for a year and try it out. If we can find a few like-minded families, we might try one of these pods that people have done since COVID in the last year. But we're going to give that a shot. I've had people in the last few days say,

you know, maybe consider starting a school, which is something that I've been maybe thinking about. Again, I have some strong views on education and curriculum that are that are somewhat different, more class secular classical than what schools really teach these days. So it's something I'd like to think about. I'm not saying, you know, it's easy. Most families can't do it. What we were able to do and what we'll try to do. And maybe there are schools out there i'm sure there are i've heard i've had people reach out to me and say look there are schools out there that aren't quite doing this or at least aren't doing you know it's sort of disorganized and i'm sorry probably my fault but just so we know so you wrote a letter after your daughter was after you pulled your daughter from school to

explain to the community no oh she's still there she's still in school they laid her to say she's remote so we don't have to worry about too many issues but she's still there i will say you know the administration i won't say much about but the teachers have been tremendous and supportive and and my daughter is doing very well uh like i mean she knows what's going on she is supportive of what's going on she actually wrote on her own which we had to tone down at the end, a strong email. Wow. I tried, if you're friendly with Jane, if you can pass this message, which is I tried to send her an email saying basically as a human being, I know, I'm sure I can appreciate what she is going through. I know it is

difficult because it's been difficult for me. That got bounced back because I've been completely excommunicated from the Church of Brearley uh i'm not allowed to email anybody they they it gets bounced back but um but my daughter's doing well she's still in school okay so let me i know james wants to get in but let me just if if you're as a parent you're kind of checkmated right you're checking like you're and then if you're lucky your daughter does really well and she goes to uh you know fan pick a fancy college, it's going to be there too. There's no way out of this bubble.

But here's my cynical pitch to you or my cynical analysis. That one of the things that's happened at these schools has been it's getting harder and harder and harder to place those students in the Ivy League institutions they used to waltz into. Those universities are more competitive those universities are more uh are looking further and further afield for their students um it's harder to get you know i kind of waltz frankly i don't think i i certainly know with my grades and my uh academic achievement i wouldn't be going to Yale if I was graduating from high school this year, right? I wouldn't make it. I wouldn't be qualified. In 1983, I was super qualified. When you strip away the natural deal that a lot of parents feel,

I mean, the subconscious deal, I spend spend fifty five thousand dollars i send my kid to a school i let it happen and that kid then goes to harvard if you take that second part away the the the quo of the quid pro quo that all you're left with is an education and if you don't like the product no good and if it's no good. Product is no good. People. Okay. This is back to, you know, Peter's question. An awful lot of people are not there for the education. Right. They're there for the status symbol and for the doors that it opens and for the network and for getting you into, you know, the Harvards and yells of the world.

I want my daughter to get a really, really, really good education. I think, you know, we're losing the, and this is a much broader topic, we're losing the enlightenment here with everything that is going on. And I want her to be one of the few that actually still knows the classics. I did not get that education. I had a public, you know, a decent public school education, not, you know, not really in the classics. I want her to have that.

I want to make sure she gets that. I think there is some aspect of that still at a Brearley, but I don't think there'll be much of it. If we continue down this path, there will be very little of it down the road. I had, there was a, a really student who wrote a rebuttal. I don't want to say much, but you know, one of the things I think she said when she was, you know, we still teach Latin. Yeah. But for how much longer? I don't think much longer going down the right direction. So, Andrew, could I? I'm sorry.

I just want to bear in on Rob's question. Actually, I just want to ask the same question all over again, because this strikes me as weird. You don't like my answer? I like the answer. No, well, if you're not there for the education, you're there for the deal. And here's the deal. Spend a ton of money. Keep your mouth shut.

Make sure the kids do well in their grades. And in fact, of course, one of the secrets, one of the dirty secrets at these schools is that even after you spend the $60,000 a year, you're expected to spend money on tutors as well. Because of course and donate donations right so the money spend the money keep your mouth shut because here's what happens your child goes to columbia or harvard or yale i mean if it's a catastrophe amherst or Williams. But the very diversity nonsense, whatever the word is, that is now part of the deal at Brearley, shut up and put up with this, sign up on it. It's eroding the deal.

All those institutions have faculty, all the institutions I just named have faculty that want students. A big thing is we're all one world now. Let's get our students from Ghana, not Manhattan. Let's get our students from Malaysia, not Bronxville. The deal is going to go away too. And then what happens to Brearley? That's a good point. I mean, I haven't honestly thought in that sense.

Yeah, it is absolutely harder to get into those universities these days. It is more competitive. I don't know what happens. I'm not looking that far. I want to fix the educational aspect of it to the extent we can. What happens to the institution? We need new institutions. We need institutions that are actually, again, I think go back to more of a secular classical education and that are there for the children, not for the institution. Andrew, I don't know whether you hear yourself. You have just talked your way into starting a school. This is all the things that you're saying about what should take place in a school. my heart is just leaping when I listen to you. And I think, wow, this guy's tough. He can write. He's made money in extremely competitive

markets. Make that guy headmaster and start a new, find some derelict brown house someplace. And then, of course, what I think is he starts a school and Bill de Blasio goes after him in a nanosecond. The regulatory wars that will be launched against you. I don't even, I mean, move to Texas. I really, really do. And I will say this, Ed, if I do something or someone does something like this, it should not just be for the least. Not just for the really students. I think everybody, you should have tracking be for elites. Not just for the merely students. I think everybody, you should have tracking within the school.

I do believe that. But everybody should have the opportunity to get this kind of education. And more than anything else, it's sort of the history and the civics that we have completely lost in education in this country over many, many, many decades. And as I wrote in my letter, we have the most unwise and unvirtuous leadership of both political parties at all levels of government because people don't know they are not getting this history in civics education. And that's something that we need, not just of the elites that go to Burley. Andrew, you mentioned before that we're losing the enlightenment. I don't think we're losing it. Yeah, losing it in the sense we lost our car keys.

I think we dug a pit and tossed and pushed it in and set it on fire. When I read your letter, I was struck by so many things of it. I mean, it's just a brilliant piece of work. It was like watching the arrows of crossbows darken the sky. Every point that you made was so good. And so the thing that I did not get from your letter was, I don't know if this guy's a Democrat or Republican, because I got the sense that you were a classic American, that you were invested in classic American ideas and virtues. So what you're saying transcends political ideology in many ways. And there's the hope that

we can get people together to fight this. But the problem is, is since they have come up with new definitions of what it means to be American, they've come up with new definitions of history. They have established a mantle and chosen and claimed for themselves a mantle of virtue that means anybody who is attacking them and their ideas is morally suspect. You're not a good person. Because the only answer to what they are putting forth are the classic American ideas, which they have already set aside as being unworthy of future study. So it makes me think that there is no way we can reform any institution that has steeped itself in marinates and skin critical race theory, the only way is to separate it and find a parallel institutional apparatus of our own. Or is it possible? Is it possible for these

institutions that you've described all over the country from what you're hearing to ameliorate, to change, to react to the pushback and pull back from this? Or is it frankly got its roots in so deep there's no hope? I think there's some possibility. And to solve the school problem, we have to solve the cancel culture problem because too many people are afraid to speak up. I do think if enough people spoke up, at least in a private school setting, in a school like Brearley, it might be able to be reversed. Fully no, but to some extent. I'm not optimistic about that. I think we have to build new. Um, and, and that's hard. That's really, really, really hard to do that, but you're right. I'll answer the political question. Yeah. I'm, I'm like a lot of people politically homeless. Well, um, if you're going to, if you're going to start in New York, you're going to have to

find a school, a building that looks like the school's been there for 100 years, right? No, you know what? I was thinking this. Again, it's about education. I'll say this, and this might be somewhat controversial from an educational standpoint. I don't believe in a whole lot of technology. Books and blackboards, I think, is a much, much better way of teaching. I can tell you this, in every class my daughter has where they have all these fancy whiteboards and technology,

the teacher's spending half the time trying to get it to work. This is such a waste of time. And now when things are remote, it's a completely different story. But no, you need the proverbial one-room schoolhouse here. And really, really, really good teachers. And they are out there. And a lot of those really, really, really good teachers are the ones that have left institutions like Brewery because they can't deal with this stuff. They just want to teach. They want to teach really well. I think those people are out there.

So I think you don't need a whole lot to get this started. I hope I'm right. I think you are right. I mean, I think that this is exciting. Look, there are a lot of people who did this in the 50s and 60s. They started schools. They started, you know, the best practices of the intellectual movement in the 50s and 60s. Those schools now seem incredibly outdated and quaint or incredibly hippie and radical, but the impulse was there. It was the same impulse. Can I just go back to the just the tick tock at the moment because it seems to me that you i mean this didn't just happen

i mean you probably sitting around rolling your eyes at stuff your daughter would come and you just receive this or you'd read they're telling you what they like they talk what you're learning x and y instead of a and b you know let see that by all the parents I know who have this experience say like, well, you don't know when world war one was, but you're going to tell me, you know, some other nonsense.

Right. Okay. Um, first thing is what, what was the moment that where you said, okay, enough. I took,

that's my first question. Was there a moment? What was it? What was that? Cause the parents all around a moment what was it what was that because the parents all around are like okay what what where's what how far is too far did there was no i mean that was a moment when i decided to write the letter there was no one instance where i said this is just ridiculous we have to stop this i've been trying to organize behind the scenes you know since the beginning of this school year again as i as I said earlier, since, you know, George Floyd is when, and BLM is when this has really accelerated,

it became obvious that not enough people were going to speak up. I said, you know, when we decided not to send her back next year, and that was a, that was my daughter's decision as well. We didn't say, we're not letting you go back. We're saying, what do you want to do? Do you want to go back? And so she was fully supportive of that. And when we said we're not going back next year, I said, okay, you know what? with a set of principles, even a philosophy. It's perfectly legitimate to propose a philosophy and have it rejected or have it debated. The argument against your letter that came from the head of school, among others, is that it made students feel unsafe they felt unsafe um to me it's like and i i'd love to yeah it's like can i first of all i want to say that it's impossible to argue it's impossible to debate somebody if if your argument is an assault on them so they can't marshal on a counter-argument instead they retreat and say stop beating me over the head with your facts

and then the second thing is does was were there no parents that rolled their eyes and laughed at this, they feel unsafe. Do they really feel unsafe? Oh, I've talked to a lot of people that were very, very unhappy with Jane's letter for that reason, especially and for some other reasons. That was striking to me. It was absolutely striking because what we have always been told in the seven years of Brearley is what they want more than anything else. You have to understand this is not just a really good school. This is

considered really, really one of the top girls. Right. No, no, it's a great school. They always said is that we want number one priority, you know, girls with adventurous intellect, brave intellect, courageous girls intellectually. And here you're saying that our high schoolers are afraid of a piece of paper being mailed to their parents. I mean, that was words hardly described. That was really shocking to me. And I think an awful lot of parents picked up. circulating by two parents in my daughter's grade who are also alums. Parents are saying the same thing, that it was frightening to them. This is the culture we're living in. This is not just Brearley. This is not just private school. This is not just New York. It's not just schools. What's going on? This is losing the enlightenment that people cannot, are afraid to have a conversation. My letter was not about race. My letter was about education, but broadly, it was about being able to have a conversation about these issues, not sticking your fingers

in your ear and saying, we won't talk about it. You're a racist. That's what they're doing. Right. They infer from what you said, a whole raft of issues and ideas behind it, which they believe naturally results in about 36 hours later in Nazi Germany. But I'll tell you, speaking of Nazi Germany, I'll say, so, so this letter from the two parents after calling me a, you know, vile racist or whatever, and saying, I did it for the fame and fortune, goes on to say something like this. And I won't, I can't quote it, but we are shocked that there are still parents that aren't with us on this

anti-racism curriculum on these initiatives and that there aren't with us on this anti-racism curriculum, on these initiatives, and that there aren't parents with us and families with us means we have failed. And we need to double our efforts to make sure every family, this is, insert your communist, fascist, whatever analogy here, this is unbelievably scary that you have parents, mom, saying. This is an observation. Actually, what it is, is a plea. I've been sitting here looking at you thinking, oh my goodness.

And then a moment ago, Rob asked his question about the current institutions and you said, you're skeptical. You think we need to build new institutions. So here's what I would almost beg you to do. I look at you and say, he's right. Furthermore, he is, by the standards of most Americans, almost impeccably positioned to make the effort of starting an institution. He's got money in the bank.

He's articulate. He knows how to write. He has clearly formed ideas about education. My plea is, first of all, do it. But in the second place, start a podcast journal. Because all kinds of people are saying, yes, we have to do this, but how? How is it done? And I would download you and listen to this in the car and say, what's going on with Gutman? What's the latest on fundraising? What's the latest on how do you find a accredited or can you get people to volunteer so that how do you do it just how do you do it i just have the feeling you're in a position to perform a huge service really i don't want to get i mean maybe after the show scott can add the national anthem swelling up right now at this point in my speech but you're in a position to perform a service to the nation i really think i really think yeah but you know who would carry

that podcast oh wait a minute well i have yeah i have strong views on a lot of other topics too if you want to talk about them non-mainstream yeah i know first things first buster no i thank you i i i want to seriously think about it not obviously more than seriously think about it i want to try to figure out how to do it there's a number of things that i that i'd like to do now on this issue and and related issues and i have to figure out i mean this has been overwhelming the last few days uh and i haven't slept much but yeah i would really like to pursue this well we look forward to hearing all of these strong opinions you have for example star wars the preels, are they good or they bad?

I wrote something on this. Is that what you're asking? No, I'm just, I'm, I'm testing the depth and breadth because if you're one of those people who can talk for an hour about Star Wars versus Star Trek, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can talk about Star Wars. They, they look, the prequels look a lot better now after obviously the-

Fascinating. Which I thought were atrocious. What they did, I left the theater when they killed Luke Skywalker. Wow, that is- Devastating. I mean, I was a big fan. This was my age.

And Luke Skywalker was a, this is an icon of, what they did was so sad. So I hated what Disney has done with the new movies, the prequels. I can't say they're good movies, but at least what George Lucas was trying to do is, you know, expand the universe. I have actually written about this on my blog. I write occasionally, if you're really interested, if you want to invite me back, we can talk more about it. Yeah. First of all, this means we're going to have to put a spoiler

on the podcast. Cause you mentioned that Skywalker dies. Not everybody's seen it, dude. But secondly, yes, we will have you on this because I have the feeling that I could ask you about 20th century ceramic techniques and whether you prefer a matte finish or a shiny. And you'd have an opinion on it. It would be fun to listen to. So, yeah, we got to have you back on this and many other things. Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Gutman. Thank you for having me. Good luck, Andrew. talk to you soon okay um and unfortunately the man goes not

knowing why there's a toilet in my room in my studio why is there can we talk about that all right i'll tell you why because um a little while ago a single little ceramic tile that's why i mentioned that popped up in my daughter's bathroom it was was loose. And so I glued it back in. And a year later, two of them were up. Well, that's not good. And then I realized that a lot of them were coming loose. Oh, drat the luck. So I called in a grout guy and the grout guy said, the problem is not your grout. Problem's not your tile. The problem is you got tenting going on under here. You got a plywood subflooring and the moisture from the adjacent shower is making a tent up. So you're going to have to replace this section of tile here. Got some people to come in

and look at that and say, well, actually, you're probably going to have to replace the entire tile floor. Great. Fantastic. Unfortunately, they couldn't find the proper tile because they haven't made the three-eighths of an inch variety since the Roman Empire fell. So we had to remove everything, including the radiator, which meant that the radiator had to be taken out of the room. The entire house drained of all of its fluid, vampire-like, and then put back in. So while they're doing that, the toilet, which they had to pick up and move because all the tiles got to go because one piece came out, is now sitting in my room waiting for it to be restored. So that's basically it.

And also, if I was Mr. Gutman, I would be, what is the temptation to call your firstborn son Casper? Do you wonder whether or not anybody would pick up the reference? Casper Gutman? Rob, you know who that is, of course. I don't know who that is. Who is that? You don't know who Casper Gutman is. Peter, do you know who Casper Gutman is?

I don't have a clue, but I'm the person who's not supposed to have a clue. You're messing me. I can't believe it. Casper Gutman was a Sydney Green Streets character in the Maltese Falcon. He was the man who was going around looking for one rare object after the other. In the actual sequel to the Maltese Falcon,

which was written but never filmed, he was looking for a jewel and a tooth. And probably in one before, he's looking for a very rare stamp with an airplane flying upside down or something like that. Cas gutter was a man with a fine eye for the things that were valuable in life but speaking of stamps do you have uh some stamps sitting in your junk drawer if you do you're probably christmas stamps that you haven't used and you end up slapping on things on january and julys i mean i sent out a bill the other day with the santa gleaming from

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Any thoughts on his passing? I was surprised that he, not that he was still alive, but that he was not older. I mean, this is just a personal thing for me, but when he ran in 1984, by the way, I voted for him in 1984. And what did Ronald Reagan say when you told him that? Ronald Reagan forgave me. He said, well, you were one of the few, he said to me when I told him, when I confessed. He seemed to possibly old then and that was a 1984 um really compared to any compared to reagan yeah yeah an inexperienced like yeah well just compared to me because i was in college and i was a sophomore in college and it and i just thought oh these are all these old

people old men but of course reagan has been dead for decades so like to me it wasn't that i i knew he was still alive but i just thought he'd be like 110 or something because it just seemed like uh 93 wasn't i guess it was 93 wasn't old enough um in my head um but then of course you know the reaper comes for all of us as we say i i would i would say uh one of the things i remember the most about him was how kind of like cheerful he was about the the 1980 the drubbing he received in 1984 um he said that he he would go because we as a family we would go to the sort of same place on saint john um and he went right after uh november um uh the november um

uh election and he said he was walking on the beach and he could always tell who the person had voted for by what they said to him. The ones who said, sorry about your loss. Sorry about it. Kind of cold, a little brusque. They had voted for him. And the ones who said, listen, you're a great American. You did a great thing. That's, you know, you fought a great fight and something laudatory. And those are always the people who had voted for Reagan.

And he said, it's just sort of interesting, like, the people who voted for him, just, they were ready for him to go. But the people who voted for Reagan were like, no you're a great american um i don't know i don't know i don't know what to make of that but i just thought it was sort of a funny little observation that a guy made who seemed to be from another at this point from another planet politically you know what did reagan think of him i don't know that ronald reagan thought much of him excuse me i don't mean to say that re Reagan, Reagan never thought ill of anybody, really. He did have some sharp opinions, but of people, he was always able to separate personality from politics.

But Reagan rolled over this guy and forgot about him. As far as I can tell, Ronald Reagan didn't, old as he was, Ronald Reagan was always thinking about what comes next. So as far as I'm aware, there was no terrific friendship that ever developed. They never exchanged. I wrote the speech that Reagan delivered for the opening of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. And Reagan was really warm to Jimmy Carter and gave what I thought was a pretty good speech, having written it, of course. Carter actually, Reagan gave a good enough speech that Carter, warm enough speech, what I towers of downtown Atlanta. And so somewhere I put in there, Reagan looks at Atlanta and says, the South has risen again. Then they all, okay, so it's pro-Carter, pro-South. And Carter took

the podium and said, well, now I see why you won and I lost. The point, however, is that as far as I'm aware, Ronald Reagan never mentioned Jimmy Carter again. Just onward, onward. These are professional engagements. Actors don't grow fond of each other particularly, do they, Rob? They do their work and move on. They do their work and they move on every now and then. They don't really, yeah. I mean, interestingly about that speech is that I do recall seeing that speech.

What, the Reagan speech? The Reagan speech to Carter. And carter and i remember carter's kind of gracious reply yes now i know why you won and i didn't and i also remember i think i watched a clip of it on i think it was probably the old mclaughlin group remember that old talk show of course and bob novak they played the clip and bob movie said the thing about that is that jimmy carter has no idea why reagan won and he he Carter has no idea why Reagan won. And he still has no idea. He just said it.

But you could see he has no idea. And everybody kind of laughed uproariously. And I remember thinking, like, that was a very interesting insight. Again, it's a topic. Rob, I feel so much better hearing that you saw that speech because it feels to me at least a modest return on Cheers. Because all through the 80s, watched cheers every single week so i always felt in some way that i was in your debt yeah i didn't see the whole speech though let's not go too far enough of this enough indeed this podcast was brought to you by quip bambi and stamps.com join today please support them for supporting us

and you can listen to the best of Ricochet Radio show hosts on various stations hosted by moi. Check your local listings, as they say. And of course, you can go to Apple Podcasts for that five-star review, which just helps us so much. I don't know why you haven't done it yet. You should be consumed by guilt that you haven't. Do it today.

Everybody, thanks for joining us. Thanks to our guests. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, fellas. everybody thanks for joining us thanks to our guests and we'll seeasm in the classroom Teacher, leave them kids alone Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone! All in all it's just a

leather brick in the wall All in all you're just a leather brick in the wall We don't need no education We don't need no school control. The dogs are cancelled in the classroom. Teachers leave their kids alone. Hey! Teacher!

Leave those kids alone. Holding on, you're just a another brick in the wall. Holding on, you're just not Now they're breaking the wall Ricochet! Join the conversation. Neither he pointed out the fact that there's a toilet sitting in the background of my studio here. There is.

Why is that? We'll talk about that later.